Just Sitting?

Act and Thought for today:


Have you tried correcting your posture? I find it very uncomfortable and eventually it slips my mind. Today I am going to make a conscious effort to think about my posture.
In fact right now my shoulders are complain and i feel a slight awareness in stoach - its hard to explain. I know yoga is recommended to help but I have tried some videos and I can't think how an overweight person can most of those poses.

Pillow Posture

Place a pillow behind your lower back while you’re sitting at your desk to avoid slouching, decrease lower-back pain, improve posture and increase abdominal strength. Even better, it sounds so comfy. Who ever said you couldn’t get in shape just by sitting there?

(From article: Got 5 Minutes? It's All You Need to Get Fit: http://www.neversaydiet.com/slideshow/5-easiest-exercises-ever)

"Good posture makes one look taller, slimmer and more confident. From a health perspective, correct posture has been shown to speed recovery from episodes of low-back pain and help prevent recurrence. In fact, there may be nothing more important than good posture to prevent many aches and pains resulting from undue stress on joints and muscles." (http://www.orthone.com/one/services/spine/posture.cfm)

FAJITA FIESTA

Two 5 A DAY portions per serving

Serves 4
Prepare 15 minutes
Cook 20 minutes
Costs £1.88 per portion

For the fajitas

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 4 skinless chicken breasts
• 1 red, 1 green, 1 yellow pepper (chopped)
• Handful of mushrooms (roughly chopped)
• Packet of fajita mix
• 8 soft flour tortillas
• 1 chopped onion

For the salad

• Tomatoes
• Cucumber
• Lettuce

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1. Heat the oil in a large pan
2. Add the onion and diced chicken
3. Add the other vegetables to the heat and stir
4. Stir in the fajita mix
5. Meanwhile prepare a mixed salad of tomatoes, cucumber and lettuce leaves
6. Warm the tortillas in a heated oven for 3 mins or a microwave for 1 min
7. Serve all together

Vegetarians

Swap the chicken for more veg

Extra twists

1. Serve with a tomato salsa for exra flavour
2. Carrot stick dips with hummus or guacamole makes a great starter
3. Use leftovers as sandwhich filler or with a baked potato

From 5 a day tips

Link for the Week

http://eatseasonably.co.uk/

What’s awesome in August? Raspberries.

Red, ripe, juicy and eminently squishable, these furry little numbers may well be the finest tasting of all the berries and are a real summer crowd pleaser.

Our quick and tasty tip:

* Try lightly crushing some raspberries with a little icing sugar and orange juice, then folding through softly whipped vanilla cream and serving with freshly baked shortbread.

Some Good Resources

Hi

I am back. Its been a busy and exciting few weeks. Ended with me getting a cold/hayfever - still recovering from that.

No Tv Week: http://www.screentime.org/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1
Depression: http://www.helpguide.org/mental/depression_tips.htm

Fruit and Vegetable Recipes they WILL Eat

Nutrition in disguise

From Health Recipes. com

Secret ways to hide nutrition in foods kids love!

Now that we’ve seen the importance of including fruits and vegetables in our diet, how can we make sure that our family will eat them? By playing a game called, trick or treat; emphasis on the word, trick. Vegetables can be a treat if they are part of a favorite meal. Example: tacos (stuffed with veggies), pizza with vegetable toppings, hamburgers with sliced tomatoes and lettuce, raw vegetable sticks with a favorite dip, cauliflower with cheese sauce, etc. But we may likely rely heavily on the trick aspect of introducing disliked vegetables.

If you take the time to learn what healthy foods your children do love, it will make your job easier. Print the Favorite Healthy Foods and Meals template in the Schedules and Templates section of this book and assign a sheet to each child and/or husband. Write their favorite healthy foods on their assigned sheets. You may be surprised to learn that they actually enjoy quite a few healthy foods. Once you’ve learned what their favorite foods are, you can serve these foods openly. The next step will be to secretly add disliked vegetables into their diet. Here are ways to trick your family into eating nutritious food.

Nutrition in disguise

~ Most children will eat vegetables if they are a part of homemade soup.

~ Pass cooked vegetables in a food processor and add to hamburger patties, meatballs or meatloaf.

~ Finely grate zucchini or carrots and add to pancake batter.

~ Add finely chopped cooked vegetables to canned or packaged soup.

~ Add freshly juiced carrot juice to canned vegetable or tomato juice.

~ Add grated zucchini to square or muffin mixes.

~ Puree vegetables and add to chili or spaghetti sauce.

~ Add grated carrots to tuna or chicken salad.

~ Hide veggies in casseroles and main dishes.

~ Mix fat-free sour cream into a favorite salad dressing.

~ Serve raw vegetables with a favorite dip.

~ Mix regular peanut butter with freshly ground peanuts.

~ Use whole grain bread for grilled cheese sandwiches ~ the toasting will hide the color of the bread.

~ Go from white bread to 60% whole wheat for one month, then introduce whole-grain bread. You can make a sandwich using one slice of the 60% bread and one slice of the whole-grain bread. Serve with the lighter bread slice facing up.

~ Most children will eat a meal that they helped to prepare.

~ Let them make cookies with you. Use whole wheat and carob chips and they won’t know the difference, especially if they are the ones making the cookies. There aren’t too many children who will not eat their own baking.

~ You can create a desire to eat healthier treats by designating a new healthy treat as, mommy’s treat. You can say something like, "these are mommy’s very special yummy cookies, and you can’t have any, okay?" You can even place the cookies in a fancy cookie jar to increase the appeal. Let a couple days go by before ‘reluctantly giving in’ to their requests.

~ Sneak some whole-grain cookies into a bag of favorite mixed cookies, and eventually replace unhealthy cookies with healthier cookies.

~ Use cookie cutters to make fun sandwiches with whole-grain bread.

~ Mix whole-grain noodles into regular spaghetti or macaroni and cheese dishes.

~ Mix soaked soy bits in the ground beef. Slowly increase the soy/ground beef ratio in meals over time and they won’t notice that they are eating soy bits instead of ground beef.

Articles of Interest

Five Ways to Cut 100 Calories from your Diet

How to Prevent Freezer Burn

How to Stretch Your Food Budget (still eat healthily)

Tip for the Day (from igoogle page)
Eat several small meals each day instead of three big meals. Your metabolism will stay high and burn more fat

Weight Watchers

(Ebook) Weight Watchers

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Magazines Health & Medicine Health-Nutrition

Cooking Apples

I was given some cooking apples and I have been looking for low fat/low Gi recipes. I made apple crumble this past weekend for the first time but it did not fall into either of these categories , it was for a potluck so I figured i was safe (in that I would not eat it all). I have actually never been an apple tart fan.

This recipe looks good (not sure its really low 7g fat- if I remember correctly it has to be 5g/100g to considered that but I guess its musch lower than a normal muffin)- not quite sure what they mean my wholegrain breakfast cereal - I am guessing anything like wholegrain sheddies, weetbix or soemthing like that.

Vanilla Apple Muffins (from Sanitarium Recipes)
2 cups wholegrain breakfast cereal

2 cups wholemeal self-raising flour

2 apples, cored and diced

1/4 cup honey

1/4 cup canola oil

1 egg, lightly beaten1 cup

low fat soy milk

2 teaspoons vanilla essence

Combine cereal and flour in a mixing bowl. Make a well in the centre.
Add remaining ingredients and mix until just combined.
Spoon into a lightly greased 12 cup capacity muffin tray and bake at 180ºC for 20-30 minutes or until golden.
Makes 12

Per serve:

760 kilojoules (180 calories).

Protein 4g.Fat 7g.Carbohydrate 27g.Sodium 160mg.

Potassium 140mg.Calcium 40mg.Iron 1mg.Fibre 3g

Homemade face masks

Looking for a way to reward yourself without breaking the bank or eating?

Rewarding yourself after you have reached your goals is positive reinforcement.

A few simple homemade masks

Oily Skin

egg white
1 tsp. cornstarch
Beat ingredients. Apply to face, let dry 10-15 min. Rinse.

Corn flour is an excellent ingredient if you're dealing with oily skin. Corn flour picks up oil from the skin and traps it, leaving the skin moisturized but with diminished oiliness and shine free.

Normal, combination skin, oily and blemished skin

Mix one egg white,
1/2 cup cooked instant oatmeal
a teaspoon olive oil
a few drops of lemon juice until smooth.

Spread on your face and neck, leave on for 15 – 30 min then rinse with lukewarm water. Few drops lemon juice will help to reduce blackheads while egg white will leave your skin feel “tight” after this mask application.

Dry skin

Mix one egg yolk,
a teaspoon honey
a teaspoon olive oil
some vitamin E oil.

Spread over your face and neck, leave on for 15 – 30 min then rinse in lukewarm water. You can add more olive oil if you still feel dry on your skin.

For more recipes and some videos got to: Natural Skin Care Info

Healing your headaches without medication

Today I have a major headache and I do have any painkillers in the house and don't want to drive into town to buy - so I am going to try this instead.

Drink water and do the following relaxation exercise.

Walking

WoW - I remember as a kid watching the Comrades Marathon on TV. I was convinced that if I walked from the time it started until the firs person came in I could say I did the race to. At least one year I drove my family crazy by just doing that. I was forced to walk up and down the road outside. My brother was convinced that it was just an excuse not do my chores.

When I read about a walking dvd on one of the Healthy You bloggers blog. It got me thinking that is exactly something I would enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBDTGCs0yNk&feature=related

Exercise in 4 parts and 4 day cycles

Today i needed a bit of breather so I decided that I would do some stretches and fidget.
I am glad to report that I have now exercised and 8 glasses of drank water for 8 days and I have cut out 100 calories from my diet for 4 days.

My next four day goal is to maintain the the exercise and water drinking habit and to cut a further 100 calories. To ensure I actually do cut out another 100 calories I plan to keep a food diary. I plan to use cronometer - CRON-O-Meter is free, open source, and cross-platform dieting software. Let's see how that goes.

Reward tonight: is a radox bubble bath by candlelight !

In Martha's book 4 Day Win she grades exercise into 4 parts.

A
B
C
D
(Oops - I have misplaced my book - will add in this info later in the meantime read the links below)

You can read an excerpt from the book - Edging your way into exercise: Here

I just discovered this today http://www.thefourdaywin.com

Online Resources

I get regular messages from Sparks People. I never really got the hang of uses their resources like the food diary, calorie counter etc. But I like some of the articles and I have used some of their exercise videos.

They also have good motivational tips and quizzes.

Here are two interesting links:

SparkPeople's Online Workout Videos

Try All 6 of Our Fitness Videos!

-- By SparkPeople

10 Tips to Avoid Holiday Weight Gain

Are You Beginning to Look a Lot Like Santa?

-- By John McGran, Food Writer

Do you have an online resource that you have found useful?